Every Heart Needs a Beat
by hurriCADE
Summary: "Beca always ends up obnoxiously blasting her music through the apartment, and you become irritated, shouting at her to turn it down over the vibrating bass line." Beca plays the beat to Aubrey's heart, maybe a bit too loudly. Tragic Mitchsen oneshot.


**A/N: So. I apologize for having not posted anything in awhile. I've been playing with a bunch of ideas, but none of them have really been working. I realize this is a much different style than I usually use writing-wise, and a lot more serious, but I wanted to test it out and see if I could do it, especially considering I wasn't really fond of my last tragedy piece. Hopefully my next piece will be happier, but for now, on with the tragedy! Hope you guys like:3**

**DISCLAIMER: Don't own Pitch Perfect. Wish I did. I'd be one happy fandomer if I did. 'Tis but another tragedy.**

* * *

It happens everyday it seems, something you suppose you should have expected from living with an aspiring DJ: the music volume in the house. It always ends up being at obnoxiously high levels, beats blaring uncomfortably in your eardrums and vibrating the ground beneath you. Sometimes you'll arrive home from work to this, hearing the resounding, rumbling bass as you approach the front door. Other times you'll be reading a book or cooking supper, relishing in the peace and quiet, when out of nowhere a raving riff bursts through the silence, causing you to jump and completely breaking your concentration. This happens quite often, and you're usually left to holler in annoyance at your girlfriend to turn the volume down. Beca always complies without complaint, lowering the sound levels to a much tolerable state and flashing you a sheepish adorable grin that makes you forgive her just a little bit.

The music is always cranked to the exact same unbearable volume the next day though, which you don't understand. So you tell Beca to turn it down again, your palms over your ears as you try to prevent a headache from forming. The brunette does the exact same thing, turning it down as she flashes you a silent apologetic grin. The same thing happens the next day.

So this becomes your routine in a way; Beca always ends up obnoxiously blasting her music through the apartment, and you become irritated, shouting at her to turn it down over the vibrating bass line. She complies with a simple crooked grin, and your irritation melts away slightly. This is your daily procedure, one that doesn't quite make sense to you - why can't Beca just keep it at a lower level if she knows you're just gonna ask her to turn it down anyway? - but you don't say anything, preferring to just let the little DJ be; after all, the neighbors miraculously haven't complained yet, and while you do wish you could enjoy one night of peace and quiet, Beca always turns it down as soon as you ask her to, so it really isn't an issue you consider worth confronting.

However, soon an issue does begin to make itself known. You start noticing how Beca turns _everything_ up higher than average volumes: the television, her phone ringer, anything that needs to be heard is louder than necessary. At first you wonder if she's doing it to annoy you, because it seems like such a Beca thing to do, but then you begin to take note of how frequently she begins asking you to repeat yourself; you'll say something to her, whether it be a simple hello, a question, or even during the midst of a conversation. Sometimes she'll give you an odd look, as if wondering if you actually said anything or not, before asking you to repeat yourself.

One particular night, when she's curled against your chest comfortably, you decide to test out your theory, mumbling Beca's name through the silence. Getting no response, you mumble it slightly louder, still receiving no acknowledgement. After the third call of her name, she tips her head up to look at you questioningly, but whether she actually heard you or simply felt the vibration in your chest, you aren't quite sure.

"Did you say something?" she asks with innocently questioning eyes, eyes which you now notice from the close proximity, are bloodshot. You are more than concerned now, but you decide not to say anything yet, placing a sweet kiss on the crown of her head.

"I love you," you say to her instead, watching as a sweet lopsided grin adorns her face.

"I love you too, Bree," she says quietly, kissing you lightly on the lips before nuzzling back into your chest.

It's from then on, after the night you've established your girlfriend's hearing issues, you start watching Beca more closely. Your first instinct is to think that maybe it's from working so long on booming remixes and mash ups; perhaps Beca's hearing is suffering because of that. However, it's almost instantaneous than you begin noticing more things, things you kick yourself for not noticing sooner.

For one, she seems to be getting thinner; much thinner. The brunette had already been quite small to begin with, but now she's a very concerning weight. When you confront her about it, asking the brunette if she's been eating properly, she simply says she hasn't had much of an appetite the past few days with all the stress of constructing new sets and mixes for her upcoming DJ gigs.

She also seems to be much more tired lately; at first you'd chalked that up to her busy DJ schedule as well. But then, when she finally has a whole week off from the club, she still seems to be utterly exhausted, hardly eating, going to bed much earlier than she used to and waking up late. Work seems to have little effect on her tiredness and lack of appetite, which only adds to your building worry.

You also can't help but notice Beca singing less and less, which is a concerning factor in itself; you know for a fact that the younger girl absolutely loves singing, yet now it's a very rare occurrence to hear the brunette humming along to a melody or belting out lyrics. One evening, when you do hear her start singing in the kitchen, you listen in carefully, having missed your girlfriend's beautiful alto voice. Except, after about half a verse, you notice her singing becoming breathy, and the singing stops as soon as it started, leaving an out of breath brunette and a very concerned blonde in it's absence.

Then, about a month later, the coughing fits begin. At first they start out small and sparse, a cleared throat here and a small cough there, but eventually they begin to grow in frequency and intensity, leaving Beca doubled over in breathless pain as she coughs on nothing. That's when you clue in that something's wrong. Majorly wrong.

So one evening, when Beca begins coughing up blood, you begin to full out panic, though you hide it to the best of your ability. As soon as Beca's coughing dies down, you usher her out of the apartment, practically dragging the DJ into your car as you insist on a hospital visit.

"I'm sure it's just a cold," she mumbles, her breathing slightly ragged as she rests her head on her window. You waste no time in starting up the vehicle, pulling out onto the street and driving in the direction of the nearest hospital.

"I'm not sure, babe," you say, trying to hide just how worried you are about this whole situation; you don't want to scare her. "I'd rather be safe than sorry, you know?"

Beca looks like she's going to respond, but she goes into another coughing fit, one that leaves her dizzy and a bit nauseous, and you're almost positive that's the only reason she agrees to the hospital trip without anymore questioning.

* * *

While Beca is brought back into the examination room, you sit worriedly out in the waiting room, tapping your fingers out on your leg nervously and impatiently. It takes nearly an hour and a half before the doctor finally emerges and approaches you, but the stern, serious look on his face and lack of Beca with him sets off alarms in your head.

"You're Beca Mitchell's girlfriend?" he asks to clarify. You nod, standing quickly.

"Yes I am. Aubrey Posen," you introduce yourself. "Is Beca okay?"

He averts his eyes slightly. "With the symptoms you'd told us she'd been experiencing, hearing loss, bloodshot eyes, fatigue, and the breathlessness and coughing, we decided to run some tests. Not all of them have come in yet, but with the results we have gotten, we suspect Miss. Mitchell may have Granulomatosis with polyangiitis, or GPA, which is a rare blood vessel disease."

"A d-disease?" you ask, breath hitching as you realize _this is much more serious than you anticipated_. The world around you seems to waver away as a cold sweat runs down your body, numbing your senses. Your mind buzzes angrily, filled with a thousand empty thoughts, and your heart leaps into your throat as you ask the inevitable question. "Is... is she going to be okay?"

"If caught early on, the disease is quite treatable. Beca's seems quite far along already, and may have already done some permanent hearing and lung damage, but I assure you we will do everything we can to help Beca get through this," he says. These words do nothing to comfort your raging emotions; this sounds like his roundabout way of saying Beca's chances of survival are about to be gambled with, and you'd never even thought of Beca _dying_ as a possible outcome until the word disease came into play.

You swallow hard, the backs of your eyes burning aggressively. "Is there a possibility of her...?"

He sighs, running his hand over his balding head. "Sadly, death is a possibility in this situation, and I would caution you to be prepared should worst case scenario occur. However, we will try our very best to help."

He casts you one last sympathetic smile before taking his leave, and you barely have time to scramble over to the garbage bin in the corner before your heaving out your stomach's contents, tears of anguish streaming heavily down your cheeks.

* * *

The ride home is spent in heavy silence, and you glance over at your girlfriend wearily, taking note of her exhausted, defeated look as she stares ahead emptily. A bag of medication is grasped loosely in her hands, resting on her lap. The doctor had explained that the medication was going to be rather harsh on Beca's body, especially at the beginning, but it should work. Once they were able to rid the brunette of her illness and it's symptoms, they needed to maintain her health, as the disease had the risk of returning. He also said there was most likely going to be some permanent damage done to Beca's lungs and hearing, as it had been left unnoticed for so long. The situation seemed so bleak, but Beca had a chance.

"Are you okay?" you ask quietly, unsure of what to think of Beca's silent, numb exterior. You've never seen her like this before, so shell-shocked, and you wish you knew what was going on inside her head. Heck, you wish you could take away her pain for her. You wish Beca didn't have to suffer anymore. _You wish she wasn't sick anymore_.

Beca doesn't respond to you, though you don't know if it's because she didn't hear you, or she didn't want to hear you.

* * *

The medication causes Beca to get sick. You're just preparing for bed, brushing your teeth as you stare contemplatively in the mirror, when Beca bolts into the bathroom, dropping onto her knees as she begins retching into the toilet. You cast her a worried look, quickly abandoning your toothbrush and spitting out the toothpaste in your mouth before sitting down beside her, rubbing her back in gentle circles as you hold her hair back. This goes on for many more nights, and sometimes during the day. You can tell Beca's feeling completely miserable, and you wish you could tell her it will all get better soon, but you don't know for sure if it will. Her symptoms don't seem to be going away, her fatigue, her deafness, her coughing fits, none of it seems to be leaving. If anything, it almost seems like they're intensifying, leaving Beca to deal with both the illness and the pill's side effects.

Throughout all of this, Beca drowns herself into her music, most likely not wanting to think of the reality of the situation. Her music is still obnoxiously loud, as always, but now that you know why, you don't have the heart to tell her to turn it down. There will be a few nights, when an ebbing headache begins to form, that you'll ask her to lower the volume slightly, but most days you decide to just put up with it, knowing your girlfriend is miserable.

Not even a week later, when you wake up in the morning, you instantly know something's wrong. You just feel it. You hadn't been woken by Beca running to the bathroom, nor her regular coughing fits. She's simply lying peacefully beside you. Completely still, completely silent. It's the first time you've seen her so peaceful in ages. Not suffering anymore. Her body is no longer heaving with uneven breaths. Or any breath at all.

Your wailing and screams fill the silence of the room, ricocheting off the walls and through the apartment, but the cries fall on deaf ears. Except this time they're deaf for a different reason. And this is why you cry harder, the only other sound in the room being the tiny shattering sound as your heart breaks into a million tiny pieces.

* * *

The air seems heavy when you step feebly into the apartment, clad in all black as you numbly return from Beca's funeral. This is the first time you've been in the apartment since Beca's death, the last few nights having been spent at Chloe's; you hadn't been able to handle the emptiness looming over the apartment. You thought you could handle it, but now you're beginning to regret it because _all you can smell is Beca_. Beca's scent is everywhere, and though it melts your heart like it always does, it also sends a painful sharp pain through your heart.

Your eyes rake over the lonely dwelling almost robotically, the apartment that once brought you the comfort and warmth of a home now feeling cold and unfamiliar to you. Each and every area that your eyes catch seems to spur a memory with Beca that screams unsettlingly through the silence of the apartment, and your breath hitches in your throat as emotions overwhelm your senses. The time you and her had a pancake batter fight in the kitchen, the time she comforted you on the couch after an argument with your dad on the phone, the time she pushed you up against the counter and kissed you senseless after getting back from a week-long gig. They all flood through your mind like a river, and you don't realize how hard you're crying until your breath hitches with a violent sob.

Numbly, you take a step forward, your mind seeming to be completely torn apart by how silent the apartment is now. It's dead silent. No familiar mash ups, no dubstep beats, no remixed bass lines. It's something you always asked of Beca every night, _pure silence_, but this is not how you wanted it. You miss the noise, the music, the loudness. You miss Beca.

Your eyes catch sight of the bed in the bedroom, the bed where _she died_, and you choke back another heavy sob as you tear your eyes away. You don't even realize where you're headed until your stumbled autopilot steps lead you straight to Beca's speaker system. You shakily tinker with it for a moment, struggling to see through your tears, before one of Beca's mixes cuts through the silence, heavy bass vibrating the floor as the perfectly woven mash up fills the emptiness of the room.

For a brief moment, it feels just like before; you would tell Beca to turn down her music, and the brunette would flash you her signature lopsided grin of apology before lowering the volume. Except now the DJ isn't here to turn it down, and you don't have the strength to. So you simply slide to the ground, a pile of choked sobs and desperate tears, as music beats cruelly and innocently in the background.

* * *

**A/N: I'm sorry.**

**On a side note, I don't think I really did that great with capturing this particular illness properly, cuz it causes rashes and stuff too, but I just wanted one that could cause both deafness and death. I did do research on the treatment, other side effects, etc though, and I slipped those in there to make it seem as realistic as possible (you know, besides the fact that the wrong side effects are at the forefront). I send my regards to anyone that has faced disease or has a loved one who's faced it.**

**Random question to bat away a bit of the sadness! Who do you think would be top and bottom in the Mitchsen relationship? Is Beca the more dominant one because of her badassness? Or is Aubrey because of her, for the lack of better word, controlling ways? I, personally, think it would alternate depending on their moods and the situation, cuz since they're so stubborn and butt heads so often, I can't see either of them backing down so easily. What about you? What do you think?**

**Don't worry, I'm friendly:D**

**~;3'~hurriCADE~';3~**


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